autotools & prayertime

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

Thamer, to preface my questions and comments let me say that I know
close to nothing about autotools/libtoolize beyond simply using 'em
(I've never had the pleasure (or whatever you want to call it :-) in
developing 'em).  I do have a few issues with the autotools on the
itl-prayertime lib specifically.

I'm on a SUN machine using solaris, so I'm not sure if this is a
portability issue or what, but here is a minimal description.

  $ make -f Makefile.cvs
  set -x
  aclocal
  aclocal: configure.in: 9: macro `AM_PROG_LIBTOOL' not found in library
  make: *** [all] Error 1

once I comment-out the variable above (just for grins) I see this,

  set -x
  aclocal
  libtoolize --force --copy
  Remember to add `AC_PROG_LIBTOOL' to `configure.in'.
  You should update your `aclocal.m4' by running aclocal.
  autoheader
  automake --add-missing --copy
  configure.in: installing `./install-sh'
  configure.in: installing `./mkinstalldirs'
  configure.in: installing `./missing'
  Makefile.am:12: Libtool library used but `LIBTOOL' is undefined
  Makefile.am:12: 
  Makefile.am:12: The usual way to define `LIBTOOL' is to add `AC_PROG_LIBTOOL'
  Makefile.am:12: to `configure.in' and run `aclocal' and `autoconf' again.
  Makefile.am: installing `./compile'
  Makefile.am: installing `./depcomp'
  make: *** [all] Error 1

I then tried to create my own configure.in by running 'autoscan' and
that resulted in a completely different set of problems.  As noted,
I'm not familiar enough to know how to debug and correct these problems,
but I know I need to know more (chances are, I'll have to do the same
for the 'hijri' itl lib, etc).  Do you have a short HOWTO or primer (not
looking to read books and 26 chapters on the topic :-)

In passing, I believe the following suggestions might be of interest
(Elzubeir, this might of interest to you too since it affects the examples
in the developer guide),

 1. In Makefile.cvs make 'all' appear first instead of 'configure' - this
    will then simply run the autotools to create their output instead of
    forcing the user to run configure as well (he/she might not have
    intended to do that as well).

 2. Add a 'clean' option to the Makefile.cvs so that it goes back to the
    pristine condition things were in before running 'make -f Makefile.cvs'.

    In other words, rm all the intermediate files (autom4te.cache/, *.m4,
    compile, config-h.in, config.guess, config.sub, configure, depcomp,
    install-sh, ltmain.sh, missing, mkinstalldirs, etc) if one were to
    have compiled everything and wanted to revert back to the very
    beginning.

    a. Not sure if this is worth it, but try to remove things once they
       are done in the normal auto-generation process.

 3. All projects that incorporate autotools (and all are going in that
    direction), then the projects should put all its source files in
    a ./src directory and the documentations in ./doc, etc.

Using -- autoconf-2.57, automake-1.7.9, libtool-1.5

BTW: on linux I have no issues; the above 3 points would be nice to see.
     I also don't see 'fribidi' for instance using "libtoolize", is our
     process over-complicated compared to their 'bootstrap' ?

Just trying to learn...

Salam.

 - Nadim


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